Fore-and-aft rig of vesseiis



UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

GEORGE W. GERAU, OF BIlOOKLYN, NEW YORK.

FORE-AND-FT RIG- OF VESSELS.

Specification of Letters Patent No. 15,420, dated July 29, r1856.

To all whom 'it may concern:

Be it known that I, GEORGE IV. GERAU, of Brooklyn, in the county of Kings and State of New York, have invented a new and useful Improvement in the Fore-and-Aft Rig of Vessels; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full, clear, and exact description of the same, reference being had to the annexed drawings, making a part of this specification, in which- Figure l is a side view of my improvement. Fig. 2, is a side view of the rig now employed.

My invention consists in having the mainsail of triangular form attached to the boom as usual, and having a single block or halyard attached to the peak or upper end of the sail for the purpose of raising it. The lower end of the topsail is attached to the outer end of the boom, the upper part being attached as usual to the topmast. By this arrangement, the mainsail is made rather smaller than usual and the topsail rather larger. And the gait' is dispensed with and also one set of halyards, rendering the rig easy to manage or work and materially reducing the expense in the construction of the fore and aft rig of vessels.

To enable those skilled in the art to fully understand and construct my invent-ion, I will proceed to describe it.

A, Fig. l, represents the mainsail which is of triangular form, the lower part being attached to the boom B, as usual. The upper end or peak of the mainsail has a block or halyard O, attached to it, for the purpose of raising and lowering it.

l), represents the top-sail, the upper part of which is attached to the topmast E in the usual way. The lower end of the top-sail is attached to the outer end of the boom B and the outer edge of the mainsail and the inner edge of the topsail overlap each other a short distance. The top-sail, it will be seen, eX- tends the whole length of the mainsail.

In Fig. 2, the usual fore and aft rig is shown. The top-sail F, is secured at its outer lower end to the gaf G, and the galf has two sets of halyards H, I, connected with it, in order that the mainsail J may be raised and lowered. The two sets of halyards are indispensably necessary in the usual rig, because the ends of the gaila ree quire to be raised alternately, one set of halyards being lirst used and then the other, in prer to bring the mainsail up square and By my improvement, I dispense with the gafl' G, and also with one set of halyards, I. This reduces t-he expense lof my improved rig considerably below that of the usual rig. The iron work of the gaf and blocks and peak halyards are also, of course, dispensed with. A number of hands are required to hoist the mainsail of the old o-r usual rig, as two sets of halyards are used and the mainsail is quite heavy, the gait, one set of halyards and additional canvas being used, whereas in my improvement, the mainsail may be readily hoisted with comparat-ively few hands.

In my improvement, although less canvas is used in the mainsail, the topsail has more canvas, so that the sails, combined, have as much canvas as the two sails of the usual rig.

The topsail D, in my improvement is raised and lowered by a halyard K, in the usual way, the only difference in the topsail being in its connection with the boom instead of thegaif. f

In my improvement the topsail brails up and furls at the mast-head the same as in the old rig.

I-Iaving thus described my invention, what I claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is-

Oonstructing the mainsail A, as shown and having the lower end of the topsail D, attached to the outer end of the boom B, substantially as shown and described.

GEORGE W. GERAU.

Witnesses:

I. F. BUGKLEY, O. D. MUNN. 

